Have you noticed that Instagram is turning into a social influencers dream? Social influencers (a social media star that can influence people to like what they like or chat about) have been creatively using Instagram for their financial gain for a few years now but I have a feeling 2017 is about to step it up a notch. Read on to see the clever new way to make money from Instagram with my Instagram social influencing prediction.

1. GREATER URL POSSIBILITIES

Have you noticed how Instagram have started rolling out to the biggest influencers the possibility of adding a URL “pull up” link at the bottom of their Insta Stories? This could literally be career changing to the influencers world. Instagram currently allows one hyperlink to be placed in our Instagram bio. Yet if you, as a blogger/vlogger/YouTuber, have more than one creation come out on many platforms in one day then you won’t be able to forward your traffic to each of these sources.
An example of how helpful this is going to be is, when you have a new blog released you can chat about it on Instagram stories, or put up a picture on Instagram stories and say to your audience that they need to “pull up” the screen to see it. With this one dragging motion your audience have automatically clicked on to your blog. You can also make this URL link an affiliate coded link (more on this in point number 3) to an item that you are loving and immediately make money from each follower that clicks through. Within seconds you can direct your audience in your next Insta Story to your latest You Tube video!

2. BRAND COLLABORATIONS

Brand collaborations with influencers will now have more scope for directing traffic to their own social media platforms. Along with the URL possibilities mentioned about you can also tag other Instagram users, whether this be your friends or brands. These tags are clickable. This can direct an influencers traffic straight to a brands Instagram page.
For example, Zoella wears a cute jacket from Topshop in her Instagram Stories and tags @topshop on the Insta Stories image. Her audience which adore the jacket click the @topshop link and Topshop then have the attention of Zoella’s millions of followers.

3. AFFILIATES DREAM

Social influencers are not the only people that use affiliate links, many magazines with websites and social media sites also use them. These affiliate links are about to make the top tier of influencers and magazines stinking rich. Many influencers use affiliates links with companies such as Shop Style Collective or Skimlinks which anyone with a website can join and start using immediately. The idea behind affiliates links are that when you promote a brands product you get a small cut which varies from product to product.
A very basic example is, a blogger promotes a camera worth £100 with a commission rate of 10% / the reader buys said camera / the blogger will earn £10. Simple as that.
With Instagram allowing us to link to a URL that is coded as an affiliate link we can drive our reader traffic to click directly to the link without them even having to actually leave Instagram Stories.

4. COMPETITION FOR SNAPCHAT

For me personally I get a better reaction on Instagram stories than Snapchat purely because my audience is bigger on Instagram. I am fairly new to Snapchat, most probably because I’m not 16 and my readership is mostly between 25-34. Snapchat has not yet allowed this URL link possibility (I’m sure they will do soon). Until then I think for a micro-influencer I would suggest they concentrate on their selling powers to be used on Instagram.

Have I missed anything? Are there any other exciting ways to make money through these new social media platforms?